Extra Thoughts On Solipskier

I just wrote a review for Solipskier on the iPhone (link is to the flash version) for Finger Gaming. It's a great little game and I'd recommend it, but I had some extra thoughts that weren't relevant to the review, so I'm sharing them here. If you haven't played the game, give the flash version a try so you know what I'm talking about.

In short, Solipskier is game where the player draws (with her finger or the mouse depending) a ski slope for the skier to cruise on. There are gates for bonus points, barriers and jumps that can kill you, and that's basically it. It's an arcade game, very fast paced and frantic. But at the core, it's also basically a really stripped down version of The Sims. The player has no control over the skier, only over the mountain. Play is derived from the player's ability to predict what the skier is going to do. Draw a steep incline and the skier flies up into the air, draw a sharp drop and he'll fly off the edge and continue (useful for hitting gates in mid-air for big points). There are nice little touches too. If you mishandle the mountain you'll kill his speed and the skier has to huff it up your sloppily drawn hills, digging with his poles until he gets to the top and can get some speed up again.

While the skier's reactions to your level-design are basically jumping, going really fast, and climbing slowly, it's still very much The Sims. The player creates the situation and "good" play is based on understanding how the skier will react. Lemmings is another good example of this kind of game. You assign the lemmings jobs to perform as you attempt to save them from themselves, but you don't have direct control. You can never just say "Stand still, dammit!"

The idea of getting the player to connect with his on-screen avatar has become more and more relevant as games have become more "real" and strive to feel that way. What The Sims and Lemmings seem to suggest is that there is a very tangible difference between games in which the player is the character and in which she guides the character. For me at least, my personal investment in the well-being of the lemmings or my skier is a great deal more real than my investment in a character who I inhabit. Why is that?

He's doomed.

Here's another ski-themed example. SkiFree was a classic Windows 3.1 game where you controlled a skier dodging rocks and trees and other folks on the mountain. What anyone who had a Windows machine back then will remember is that eventually, unavoidably, the abominable snowman would appear, chase you down, and devour you. Getting eaten was the end of the game, but I can't lie:: there was a real delight in seeing that little gray monster appear and slaughter me. Knowing it was coming made it even more fun. I'd keep a careful eye out, survive as long as I could, but never did I actually want to escape forever. What would be the point?

But imagine if SkiFree cast you in the same role as Solipskier, building snowbanks to force the skier to turn left and right, building speed and trying to escape his own death. Suddenly watching the skier you are responsible for getting devoured isn't as funny. Why is it that my own game death is funny, but as soon as the role changes from controller to caretaker, it isn't?

People have a natural social inclination, a desire to care for one another and support the group as a whole. It's the same reason we bond with pets. But in the game-space there's something else going on too. When we play a character, the wall between the game world and the real world is unavoidably broken. We are always aware of the controller in our hand or the mouse under it. When we are given the responsibility of shepherding a character within the world that wall remains intact. The game stays internally consistent, our own influence is more invisible. On top of that, the player has knowledge that the character doesn't, which makes the player feel even less in control. We know the abominable snowman is coming, but no matter how many times we play the game, the skier will never say "You know, I'm tired, I think I'll just catch the lift to the bottom."

This is a fascinating aspect of gameplay. The more control we have over the actors the less important they become. While I am almost always opposed to borrowing from movie theory for making games, this is one aspect where I think games could learn a great deal about attachment and fear. No one goes to a horror movie not expecting horror. You know there is something in the dark basement and you have to watch the characters walk down the stairs, unable to hear you shouting "don't go in there!"

Obviously not all games "work" if you take away direct control from the player, but designers and writers should be aware that lack of total control is a part of reality. In an FPS, for example, the game world is basically built around the player, but maybe it doesn't have to be. Some of the best entries in the FPS format are games like Call of Duty, which at their best manage to make the conflict seem "bigger than me."

Here's a final example from Red Dead Redemption. There is an unmarked encounter that any player who beats the game will probably run into more than once, and it left a mark on my experience with the game stronger than any of the story quests. Riding through the brush in the wilderness, Marston stumbles upon a man seated beside a woman's corpse. He's holding a bottle, and after a final swig he drops dead. You could shoot the man if you wanted too, but the result is the same really. It seemed like I could never make it to him in time to see if he would speak to me. He's a dead man as soon as the encounter spawns. In a game that's all about what you can do, this is a moment that the player has no control over. It's great storytelling, and world building, and it made me feel like no matter how much agency the game gave me for good or evil, there were some people whose fate was set in stone.


I like to imagine a fictional version of Solipskier where, upon reaching the top of a steep downward hill, the skier slams to a stop and says "Whoah!" and then proceeds to slowly "pizza and french fries" his way back and forth down the hill. At the bottom he might back at his descent, pondering the scale of Nature. Maybe the higher your score climbed the more confident the skier would be, able to take on steeper and steeper hills without fear. It's a nice idea, but maybe I wouldn't pay $2.99 for it. While I enjoy looking at how a game's controls impact the themes running beneath them, it's important to remember that some games are best left to speeding down ski-slopes and grabbing mad air.